This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Visually impaired individuals need assistance navigating their environment and locating objects or obstacles in their environment, including objects or obstacles in their path of travel. For example, service animals, such as guide dogs, have been used to assist visually impaired individuals. Service animals, however, are expensive to train. Further, while service animals are able to assist in navigating an immediately surrounding area, service animals are unable to navigate to a specific remote location within a surrounding area, such as a building. Additionally, echo devices have been used to locate objects within an immediately surrounding area. Such echo devices are expensive and unable to provide the visually impaired individual with an exact position of a current location or with navigation assistance to a specific remote location within the surrounding area, such as a building.
Many mobile devices come equipped with GPS technology to determine a GPS location of the mobile device and provide a map overview of the general location of the mobile device. Such mobile devices, however, are not able to provide precise location data, or information about the locations of objects within an immediately surrounding area, that is necessary to assist a visually impaired user in navigating an environment and locating objects or obstacles in the environment, including objects or obstacles in a path of travel.